Apparently, Boston is being reverse terraformed. Initially I avoided looking for weather related information altogether, because I had been told that snow was a social construct and I didn’t want to reify it. But pictures of the town I have tilled up in my hesitant online searches are indistinguishable from Hoth, except for the super old woman shoveling her own walk all the way out to the fucking street, in the manner of a boss.

Because I am super with it and together, and I never put things off or try to iterate a partially concocted scheme to gruesome effect, I have already established a grim persona optimized for domination in that frozen hell. The reality of course is that instead of, say, establishing a necro-monarchy, we will take our boardgames out of our bags and establish another, smaller convention there in the terminal.

It must be said, though, that they have a different kind of cold than I have in my town. Brenna wanted to take a walk before she had to fly out one year after the show, and I said no, that was a terrible idea, because people were freezing in place where they stood out there and being loaded onto trucks like cordwood, bundled for quick sale, to those for whom freshness was paramount.

Somehow we ended up on the walk anyhow, because whatever, who cares, and we hadn’t gotten three blocks before we turned back. I would like to say that this was a choice we made, turning back, but we were turned back because your cold is of a fundamentally different sort. We went back because we could not go forward. It wasn’t a land habitable by people. Their cold is the great Leviathan, which marks the edge of the map.

Because I’m still new to Monster Hunter, there’s a lot I don’t know. I could absolutely look for a FAQ and solve all this stuff immediately, like watching a Raid video, and then I could go in and try to emulate another person’s valor. When I hit a true wall - as opposed to being momentarily inconvenienced by my ineptitude - maybe I’ll hit it up. But not yet. I haven’t felt like this in a very, very long time.

I apologize to Monster Hunter stalwarts here and elsewhere; I’m coming into your whole deal unprepared, but I want nothing more than to learn. This post is for people who don’t know yet, or for people who just learned, and can nod sagely along with only a hint of wistful melancholy.

Monster Hunter is a lot like Minecraft in one very specific way: everything is made up of other things, and you can go get these things. I would say it is unlike Minecraft in every other way. But that core loop of acquisition and refiguration is beyond addictive. Oh, now, wait. It is the same in another way, and that’s one of the things that makes its compulsion engine so terrible and perverse in its strength. There is no mechanically reinforced “character” in either of these games. There is no progression aside from the equipment you make or find, and the skill you build with the game’s often one of a kind arsenal.

Equipment builds your capability through the use of Skill Points, which might be a new concept to you. It certainly was to me. Imagine that each piece of my armor grants me a couple points in some useful skill. Except having a couple points in a skill doesn’t mean shit, right? It doesn’t mean that you are kinda good at something. Until you have ten points in a skill, it’s not even activated in my experience. So the game is about trying to match complimentary pieces together. Alright. Now, you understand everything you need to in order to properly contextualize my failure.

I had never seen an item that had all ten points in a skill, by itself, so imagine my surprise when I found a Gargwa Mask I could make, and I already had all the shit for it. I was picturing some haute couture motherfucking’ French type shit, flexing mad plumage, so I invested several single use armor upgrades in it before I’d even seen it on because why would it ever look like this.

Don’t forget that KATIE RICE, winner of STRIP SEARCH and creator of CAMP WEEDONWANTCHA, is running a Kickstarter to get the first volume of Camp Weedonwantcha printed up. She’s probably over in her office worrying about it, right now. Let’s see what we can do about that.

I should hit up Reddit maybe, but I am fairly certain my co-conspirator is the only person willing to go on record as saying that The Order: 1886 is anything approaching a videogame. He wants me to play it very much, presumably so that I can join his very exclusive cult, but I watched a few YouTube clips and it seems like you don’t hack monsters apart and then make hats and weapons out of their guts and white bones. And that’s all I care about right now. So I’ll have to get back to him on that.

And of course he wants to create some kind of relative shame scenario, but let’s be honest here. There’s probably more people on my team than his.

Kickstarter is a weird place. There have been some borderline inexplicable performances on there recently that manifest (for me, at least) the role its settled into at the top end, which manages - in the manner of the ancient alchemist - to convert social media momentum into cash. I have lost money a couple times on there, spectacularly in one case, but I’ve been mostly okay and helped a lot of cool shit get made. God, that one hurt, though.

If someone wants me to advertise their Kickstarter, though, it puts me in a weird position. I’m trying to feel out what exactly that means. It’s entirely possible that I am advertising a nega-product, which is the opposite of a thing. And so, of course, all responsibility thereto accrues to me and I feel strongly compelled to be a picky-pants. I don’t know how much of an all-the-time-thing I want it to be. I have accepted a couple, and turned down a couple. For example, I accepted Orion Trail (early demo) and Underworld Ascendant. Both games were Greenlit on Steam, but more importantly, they’re both games I want from people who actually know how to do what they’re pitching.